Bryce shapes

Where can I find, or how can I make a heart shape for Bryce? I've looked thru my stuff and I just don't have one. I even tried to make one in Shape Magic to use in Bryce and that's not working very well for me. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Having looked a few times over the years and failing to find a suitable one like I am imagining in my head, one task I intent to do is to try and make a heart shape for Bryce (Peter the Polar Bear will have a series of Valentine Card images this year).
So when I get round to it, I'll try and post the method I use (If I can actually figure one out).

As kiwi_gg says, you could use the terrain editor (and I'd also us a symmetrical lattice as a starting point for that), but I was going to see if I could work out the geometry and make it using boolean modelling.

Intersect boolean mode could help, I once made a reasonable copy of the Aer lingus logo using intersect modelling (It was a challenge using intersect) That was a shamrock, and the leaf is made of 3 almost heart shapes.

Of course the working files were either on the external that died, or on the HD from 2 PCs ago, which is sitting on the shelf, not coupled up to any PC at the moment.

Having looked a few times over the years and failing to find a suitable one like I am imagining in my head, one task I intent to do is to try and make a heart shape for Bryce (Peter the Polar Bear will have a series of Valentine Card images this year).
So when I get round to it, I'll try and post the method I use (If I can actually figure one out).

As kiwi_gg says, you could use the terrain editor (and I'd also us a symmetrical lattice as a starting point for that), but I was going to see if I could work out the geometry and make it using boolean modelling.

I suggest you might try MetaBalls - my favorite method to make most things organic.

Only a suggestion.....Oh! i fear you may end up with a real photo-realistic human heart......probably not what is wanted.

Here is the starting point from which the Heart can be developed further including later a H_Render then a Symmetrical Lattice which allows some refinements on the basic form. I will explore those later after this post.

Now for the basic images. You can see the basic geometry is easy but there are many variations i have not tried.

I have been trying that out today and got some nasty artifacts how did you get this so smooth? I made a hieght map, saved it as an 8 bit grayscale .bmp at 2048x2048 res and I didn't get a smooth result.

I have been trying that out today and got some nasty artifacts how did you get this so smooth? I made a hieght map, saved it as an 8 bit grayscale .bmp at 2048x2048 res and I didn't get a smooth result.

Nicely done btw.

Hello "Szaek".

I am no expert at this but i will tell you what i did.

First i made a Bryce Heart Model. Then i set it up for a distance render down the Y-axis [could use height render also]. I used heavy DOF to blur the edges. I rendered at a very high resolution [2048] to get the Grey-scale map. Export as TIFF 24 bit. Then in Terrain Editor at [2048] load the TIFF.

The manipulations are complicated and intuitive. If i mess up i simply try again.

First we drop the resolution from 2048 to 512 or even 256.

Make sure the contrast gradient from white to black is not maxed out [usually it is not as the render will be quite flat and not display all the values from white to black].

Invert image and smooth very heavily then invert again and reduce the contrast gradient otherwise we get a flat spot in the middle.

Alternate this smoothing with application of Gaussian edges.

Toward the end bump up the resolution one step at a time and apply smoothing at each step making sure a flat spot does not develop in the center. Till we get to 1024 or even 2048. But usually 1024 is enough.

As i said i mess up all the time and i try again and again.

Finally bring up the clipping bracket.

This sort of processing does loose some of the outline of the shape. It becomes more rounded. If you don't want that then this method is not suitable. For Balloon Hearts it is of course ideal.

Like playing a musical instrument you need to play with this and practice.

I could write a step by step procedure of the process but that would take many weeks and i am sick of doing tutorials.

You could also start with only an Object Mask Render [or if you are not a Bryce purist with your ideal heart shape created in Photoshop]. Then you would create all the volume only with Gaussian Edges.

There are millions of ways to do this but the objective is to get a very smooth surface in the end without loosing the shape.

Hope this helps a bit.

Remember you can always reload the basic Grey-scale shape and try again.

Come on guys, it doesn't seem like you're really putting your heart into this heart making :) I know, maybe some one should try making a round tuit instead? That way they could give it to Dave and then he'd be able to make hearts and tutorials because he said he would do it once he gets a round tuit. :) Might be a good money maker too, I'm always hearing people talking about getting one but they never seem to, so there must be a shortage of suppliers but an awful lot of demand. :)

I was not happy with my Bryce-ONLY hearts. Especially the one done as a Symmetrical Lattice. It looks nice, but it was too much of a "hit or miss job" mucking around in the Terrain Editor. I probably could not reproduce it.

So here is a better Bryce-ONLY Symmetrical Lattice Heart - one which i can reproduce reliably using known procedures and parameters.

First i show a picture of the Heart completed. It can of course be modified during the Bryce-ONLY construction process. Both the Form and the Shape can be modified.

Then some pictures of the construction process. I used BryceMODELER and BrycePAINTER. The latter is used to do Ambient painting in the DTE. These are nothing unusual about these. They are similar in concept to the various tools David and Horo have created and put on the DAZ store. I have been doing this stuff for over a decade.

The next picture [of 4 images] shows the process. To get a compound curve two disks of different radii were used. I nicer curve could be produced with 3 different radii. Of course BSOps were used.

We end up with a Heart-shaped surface to be painted on. It consists of two halves.

The first attempt was not very good as i used the wrong filter and ended up with concave sides and two flat plataux. Nothing can be done with this in the Terrain Editor. The last image [bottom right] shows the correct filter in use. It is possible to move the DTE greyscale textures upward if one wants the two lobes of the heart to have a fuller form.

The next two pictures show some of the technical details for people who want to do similar things. It is possible to build anything imaginable without using any other application than Bryce.